News

Cleveland -- Shopping ranks as a favorite activity among nearly half of all teens and young adults aged 13 to 24, according to a new survey by Forest City in partnership with Alexander Babbage. Shopping at malls ranked above a virtual shopping experience among the entire group, with the 13-to-17-year-old age group showing the strongest preference for a bricks-and-mortar shopping experience.

Lowe's has launched new products for its Iris smart home solution. The move comes three weeks after Staples threw its hat into the connected home space with its own platform.

The home improvement company has added a smart garage door controller, electronic pet door, window blinds controller and hose faucet timer to make it easier to cut energy costs, reduce water usage and keep the home secure while consumers balance active summer schedules.

Atlanta - Card.com, a provider of mobile prepaid debit cards, is partnering with IDology, a vendor of technology solutions that verify an individual’s identity and deter fraud anywhere in the payments value chain. Card.com has integrated IDology’s real-time, on demand identity verification and fraud prevention solution into their Customer Identification Program (CIP) process in order to improve their customer approval cycle, streamlining customer onboarding while also preventing fraud.

Macy’s has announced a series of new initiatives in its multi-year strategic program to enhance environmental sustainability. They are consistent with the company’s sustainability principles first adopted in 2008 and implemented with increasing intensity during the past six years.

Results through 2013 include a 38% reduction in the company’s electricity usage since 2002 and a 95% adoption rate of recycled or certified paper used in the company’s marketing materials.

By Tyler Roye, Co-founder and CEO, eGifter

Timberland has elevated Stewart Whitney to brand president, effective Oct. 5. Whitney, who has led Timberland’s growth in the Asia Pacific region since 2008, will report to Patrik Frisk, who has held the position since the brand’s 2011 acquisition by VF Corporation and was promoted to coalition president, Outdoor Americas for VF, in April.

New York – Saks Fifth Avenue and Party City are both utilizing the Scandit software-based barcode scanning and data capture platform for smartphones, tablets and wearable computing devices. Using Scandit’s Barcode Scanner SDK, the retailers are able to offer a variety of consumer- and employee-facing applications, including mobile shopping, clienteling, mobile point-of-sale, asset tracking and product information gathering.  

The National Retail Federation has joined the growing chorus of voices expecting a surge in consumer spending during the next five months to compensate for a weak start to the year.